Dark Elves and Darker Hearts
by Pizzachu
Summary: When Thor shows up and whisks Jane away to Asgard, Darcy accidentally goes along for the ride. What trouble can the taser-wielding mortal cause in the Immortal Realm? And what effects could this have on our heroes and our story? (Starts near beginning of Thor 2 and makes changes (I don't know how drastic yet) from that point. Summary will be updated as more plot points pan out.)
1. What Goes Down, Might Come Down Again

**Author's Note:**

**Chapters for this story so far seem to be turning out kinda short as I write them, but I hope to make up for it by being able to update quicker that way. Later on after I get past the initial opening stuff for the story, I expect the chapter lengths and update times to balance out a little better.**

**This story follows Darcy and how she sees events happening, though it is not told from first person. The writing style occasionally adapts to have a more Darcy-esque feel.**

* * *

Pop!

The half-full soda bottle blinks out of sight. Dropped from nearly fifty feet up, the fragile glass simply vanished still twenty feet above the unforgiving concrete below.

Children giggle, and scientists stare. The bottle is simply gone.

"How-" The clearly in-charge scientist lady, Jane foster, is stopped mid-sentence as the group of excited streetkids point up at the distant ceiling.

As abruptly as it had vanished, the soda bottle returned and promptly continued falling. Now somehow even higher in the air than it had been to begin with. The glass hurtles toward the ground once more, swishing past the three wide-eyed scientists.

And then it's gone… again.

All eyes turn to the sky in wonder. Will it come back again? Is it gone? What's happening to it? Where is it going? _Can I go too?_

Then sure enough, the bottle pops back into existence as if it had never left. Uninterrupted, it continues its rapid descent toward the ground it seems unable to find.

A child's hand slips out and catches the soda bottle as if this was all the most normal thing in the world. With a big grin aimed at the confused adults, the kid takes a big drink of the apparently unharmed soda.

"Holy shit! That's so cool!" The other girl 'scientist' shouts, and her eyes light up as bright as the children's. She looks from one dumbstruck friend to the other, not even trying to contain her excitement. "Give me your shoe!"

Jane looks at Darcy, but it's obvious the physicist didn't even hear her. She's already lost in her own smartness. So with a roll of her eyes, Darcy turns to the still-staring man to her other side. "You. Give me your shoe." Darcy smiles mischievously and points down at Ian's shoes. The young man's goofy smile fades to a look of confusion with just a hint of irritation.

"I don't see why-"

"Intern. Shoe. Now." Darcy's wide grin shrinks with every word. She stares at Ian, waiting, suddenly looking completely serious. A flustered Ian looks anywhere but at Darcy's eyes, those cold piercing eyes.

And thirty-two seconds later…

Ian slips off his sneaker and places it in Darcy's outstretched hand.

The smile is immediately back on Darcy's face, and all is forgiven. A gleeful giggle escapes her as she turns back to the railing separating her from the long fall to the apparently oh-so-hard-to-reach concrete below.

Seeing all hints of seriousness gone from the girl, Ian rolls his eyes at Darcy's back. "I hate it when you do that." Darcy only giggles and holds the captured shoe over the railing. And she lets go.

The shoe plummets towards the ground and blinks out, just like the bottle. Darcy eagerly looks up to watch for it to blink back. Even still-somewhat-bitter-about-losing-his-shoe Ian steps up to the railing to watch the miracle of his shoe falling from the ceiling.

…But nothing happened.

More than double the usual time has passed, and still Ian's shoe remains gone. Darcy and Ian's faces fall, and they turn instead to the children, who not only don't look surprised but apparently find the case of the missing shoe to be quite hilarious.

A young girl leaning on the rail bites her lip to hold back her laughter. "Sometimes they don't come back."

Ian stares blankly at the little girl, but a small smile cracks on Darcy's face. She whirls around, looking for anything else she can throw over the railing. As fun as it had been before, the game had just changed. Now it's a matter of throwing something and seeing if it would even come back at all. The excitement is nearly unbearable.

Darcy settles for a couple small pieces of scrap metal she finds on the floor behind her. They blinked out and back three times before bumping into each other. Both pieces tumble off track enough that they manage to find their way to the warehouse floor below.

The kids and Ian join in, tossing anything they can over the railing and counting how many times it fell before not coming back.

Darcy keeps her eyes on the rain of trash falling repeatedly from the ceiling, as she sits down on a set of stairs and kicks off her shoes. Moments later as everyone is once again looking for things to throw, Darcy jumps up and tosses both of her socks over the edge. She watches gleefully as they both disappear below and only one reappears above.

Ian tosses something over her shoulder. The object jingles as it sails through the air. The noise vanishes, along with the shiny little metal things.

They don't come back.

Darcy turns to look at Ian, her smile slipping somewhat. "Were those the van keys?"

Ian says nothing. The smile on his face vanishes like the keys, and he just looks down at the ground.

The children snicker, but Darcy only rolls her eyes. The game suddenly isn't so fun now that she's gonna have to walk all the way back to the apartment she's sharing with Jane.

…Speaking of Jane…Where is she?

Jane hadn't joined in the fun of throwing all nonessential (and one essential) possessions into the mysterious-portally-thing. Now that she thought about it… Jane hadn't been there for that at all. The last time Darcy can remember seeing the physicist is when she had asked her for her shoe. She must've wandered off to do more "research" or whatever. Only Jane could make something so cool sound like work. But that's Jane. She had her own weird sense of fun, but at least she usually let Darcy have a bit of fun of her own too.

Darcy doesn't usually make a habit of worrying about following Jane around when she wanders like this (and she wanders a lot), but this time it seems they will have an annoyingly long walk home, and she's getting hungry. So, she lets out a sigh as she glares up at Ian. "Let's just find Jane and get out of here."

Darcy heads upstairs, and Ian heads down. After a few minutes of not finding the physicist, even the gang of kids start looking for her. They search the entire warehouse, and nobody finds so much as a trace of Jane Foster. Genuine concern blooming in her stomach, Darcy tells everyone to check outside and in the nearby area too. And Jane is still nowhere to be found.

Ian sits down on the rough pavement and leans back against the cool metal of the warehouse. Three streetkids drop down beside him, looking bored and tired. Darcy paces anxiously in front of them all, tugging at her hair as her thoughts race from bad to worse.

"What if she got lost? She could be anywhere right now, wandering hopelessly around in the streets. That woman has NO sense of direction!

"Or what if she wandered down a dark alley somewhere, and some guy grabbed her. She could've been robbed, or killed, or kidnapped!

"Or maybe SHIELD heard about the magic truck and disappeary reappeary bottles, and they came and took her away to some super secret lab or something! …And they didn't take us!

"We have to call the cops!" Darcy's eyes are as wide as saucers by the time she reaches her conclusion. Finally stopping for breath, she looks to Ian, waiting for him to respond. But the intern's only answer is to give her an irritatingly blank look. "Like, right now!"

"Oh, uhh right." Ian fumbles in his pockets for a minute before producing his cell phone. As soon as the phone is in his hand, the kids around him scramble to their feet and take off running. Ian watches them disappear into the shadows before looking to Darcy in confusion. "What's wrong with them? Was it… something I said?"

Darcy rolls her eyes. "Just call already."  
Ian nods and calls the police.

Darcy sits down on the cold ground and stares up into a grey sky, hoping her friend is okay, wherever she is.


	2. Rain, Jane, Go Away

"I don't know what happened! One minute she was here, then she wasn't. Maybe she wandered off, maybe someone took her! Why don't you find Jane, then we can just ask her?!" Darcy had been talking to the police for over ten minutes and had made no progress. Nobody seems capable of getting past why the three of them had been out here to begin with. Nobody believes Darcy's ramblings about "fresh air" and "going for a walk." And nobody is looking for the still missing Jane Foster.

Movement in her periphery vision catches Darcy's attention, and she looks towards the warehouse. A lone figure walks out into the fading sunlight.

"Jane!"

Darcy races to her dazed friend and throws her arms around her, overwhelmingly relieved to see the physicist unharmed. Jane stiffens uncomfortably, and Darcy releases her. The newly-returned physicist stares at the bright blue flashing lights and swarm of police officers behind Darcy. And there is no small amount of irritation in her voice when she turns on Darcy. "You called the cops?!"

Darcy's mouth drops open in disbelief; Jane is mad at her, after how worried she's had her? Does she not realize-

"Jane, you've been gone for five hours!"

Jane cuts off mid-sentence, looking as if she'd been slapped. "...What?"

She didn't know! "Where did you go?"

Jane is interrupted by a loud boom of thunder. Darcy flinches slightly, and when she looks up again, she is surprised to find that it's not raining any more... at least not on her and Jane. Darcy looks around at the curtain of rain surrounding them but somehow not actually landing anywhere near them. Looking up, she sees no possible explanation for the giant invisible umbrella. So Darcy does what she always does when she doesn't understand something, she stares at Jane. Thus she was sorely disappointed to see Jane is apparently too busy staring at something else to even the notice the awesomeness going on around her. Shocked and a little irritated, Darcy slowly turns around to see what could possibly have her friend gawking like that.

There, standing under his own giant invisible umbrella, is Thor.

And just like that. Darcy is wearing the same stunned expression as her friend. She stands back and watches as Jane starts walking towards the big blonde guy in armor. Darcy smiles, thinking she's going to witness some sweet reunion type moment when suddenly... a torrent of rain comes down on her head, instantly soaking her and washing away all thoughts of sappy love scenes. The magic-umbrella-thing had only been there for Jane. "Typical." Darcy hugs herself in a vain attempt to keep warm against the freezing rain and doesn't wait long before hurrying after her friend.

Happily within the magical umbrella gain, Darcy pops up next to the two lovebirds. "So, I'm pretty sure we're getting arrested." Jane looks at Darcy startled, as if suddenly being pulled back to her world.

And then understanding hits Jane. "Excuse me a second." The physicist walks purposefully towards the line of cop cars with their brilliant blue lights.

Not in any hurry to go back over to the cops who wanted to haul her away or to the rain falling outside Thor's magic umbrella, Darcy turns instead to the god of thunder. The metal of his armor is shiny even in the dim sunlight and reflects the pretty blue of the police lights. The well-fitting armor shows off the strong muscles beneath. Darcy pokes Thor's armor. "Look at you, still all muscley and stuff."

The big blonde guy mumbles something in response, but it is clear his full attention is still on Jane Foster. Darcy rolls her eyes and turns to watch Jane argue with the cops, maybe it would get interesting.

Jane and the policeman in charge begin talking, and it quickly escalates to an argument. Unable to hear over the surrounding storm, Darcy begins edging closer to the argument and the edge of the no-rain circle. But when the cop reaches out to grab Jane's arm, Darcy starts running towards them, ready to help her friend.

As soon as the man's hand closes around Jane's arm, a blast of what looks like black and red smoke erupts from the physicist. The officer is thrown back away from Jane to slam into his car. All of the other officers are pushed back onto the ground, in varying stages of disorientation. One of the cop cars is flipped onto its side. And Darcy is hurled flat on her back, her head bouncing off the cold wet pavement. Thor, far enough away to be unaffected by the blast, runs to Jane as she staggers weakly. He wraps his strong arms around her just before she can fall to the ground.

Darcy watches them through blurry vision. She stumbles to her feet and fights a wave of nausea as the world seems to spin around her. She makes her way, somewhat unsteadily, towards her friends, as Thor scoops Jane up into his arms. Finally close enough she thinks she will be heard, Darcy opens her mouth to ask what the hell had just happened, but no words make it out. A brilliant multi-colored beam of light shoots down from the sky, crashing down right in front of her and enveloping Thor and Jane.

Darcy instantly recognizes the light, even with her mind still being a bit fuzzy from hitting her head. She's seen this before, in New Mexico, the last time Thor left for Asgard. She tries to reverse directions to avoid the magical light, but as unsteady and dizzy as she is, the maneuver is more than she can manage. Darcy trips over her own feet and falls face first into the blinding rainbow light of the Bifrost.


End file.
